Prompt-of-the-Week Club

[Deleted]

Aug 14, 2013 19:26:45 GMT -5 Sheik said:

I'd like to participate, if that's okay. =D I think I already have an idea for this week's prompt, so I'll be sure to get started right away!

Yeah, go for it! Welcome aboard! I'm really excited to see what you'll come up with!

[Deleted]

Happy Monday, everyone! Hope you all had a good week.

Here's my submission for last week's prompt:

SPOILER: Click to show

“Eek! No, stay away!”

“You can’t catch me! Ah!”

“Hah, I got you!”

The screams and laughter of young children filled the windowless, whitewashed halls. Arin peeked her head above the large couch she was hiding behind. If she stood on her tip-toes, she was just tall enough to be able to see outside the door of the lounge, where she watched the group of kids scramble by, oblivious to her presence.

She was hiding. Jaxon, her older cousin, had told her she could play with him and the bigger children if she followed his instructions, which were to hide and not make any noise and she would win the game. They seemed like simple enough rules to follow. But where was he? She hadn’t seen him run past.

Letting out a grunt of effort, she kicked at the back of the couch, trying to pull herself up a little more. Suddenly, a girl Jaxon’s age, her dark auburn hair pulled back into a thick, messy braid, swung into the room. She glanced around for only a moment before her brown eyes locked with Arin’s blue-gray ones.

Arin let out a squeak at being discovered and moved to drop back, but it was too late. The other girl’s mouth widened into a malicious grin and she launched herself at the five-year-old. “Raaaaaaawr!” she growled, bounding up onto the couch as Arin nearly fell over herself trying to keep her distance.

There was a fake potted plant in the corner and Arin made a beeline for it, hoping somehow its synthetic fronds would protect her from the girl who vaulted herself over the back of the couch and didn’t miss a beat in sprinting for the corner, her fingers curled viciously in an imitation of claws. “I’m gonna get you!!” she proclaimed, a cruel glint in her eyes.

Arin tried to slide away, but she was trapped. The other girl would move too quickly around whichever side of the pot Arin tried to escape from, grabbing for her. This had stopped being fun. She didn’t like playing chase with the children her own age and she’d hoped Jaxon’s group would be different. They were different—they were worse.

“Look out, I’m a monster!” the other girl snarled, suddenly thrusting out her hand and gripping one of Arin’s bronze pigtails. Arin let out a wail at her hair being pulled and tried to bat the girl’s arm away, but the older girl was much stronger and she began to drag Arin out from the corner.

“Leave her alone, Fia!” a boy’s voice cried out. Through watery eyes Arin saw her cousin rush into the room and bowl the older girl over, causing Fia to release her grip and send Arin tumbling.

Fia scowled at the blond, honey-eyed boy who had her pinned, and shoved him off. “She’s such a baby!” the girl hissed at him, pointing an accusatory finger at Arin, who whimpered slightly, cowering as she rose to her feet. “Stop bringing her to play with us! She’s annoying!”

Jaxon jutted out his chin and went to put an arm around Arin’s shoulder. “The other kids won’t let her play with them! And I told you not to tell her about the monsters!”

With her cousin this close, Arin found it harder to be afraid of Fia, and fear began to give way to curiosity. “… What’s monsters?” she piped up.

“It’s nothing,” Jaxon said too quickly and dismissively, glancing down at her. “It’s nothing you have to worry about.”

“They live on the surface,” Fia informed her, pointing toward the ceiling. “Way above us.” Jaxon gave her a dirty look, which she returned by sticking out her tongue.

Arin blinked. “What’s… the surface?” These were ideas she’d never heard before. Something called “monsters” that lived on “the surface”? None of that was in any books she’d read.

“It’s something that doesn’t matter,” Jaxon insisted through clenched teeth, his grip on her shoulder tightening as he stared down Fia.

The dark-haired girl looked as though she might kick him, when a young voice called out both their names. The trio turned around to see a redheaded boy leaning into the doorway. “C’mon!” he insisted. “Are you gonna play with us more?”

“Yeah,” Jaxon nodded. “We’ll be right there.” He looked back to Fia. “Go with Fergus, I’ll catch up with you in a sec.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” she retorted, folding her arms.

Jaxon frowned. “Fine, then just let me get Arin to the lift. She can hang out with my grandma.”

Fia rolled her eyes, but gestured with her chin that he was free to go, and Jaxon began to lead Arin out of the room and down the hall. Most of the doors they passed were closed. The few that weren’t opened into spaces like the one Arin had been hiding in, with plush couches and chairs, large wall-mounted flat screens, computer terminals, and water dispensing machines.

“But what is it?” Arin asked him as they turned a corner and approached the lift.

“What’s what?” Jaxon replied, sounding slightly weary.

“Monsters and the surface.” As scary as her introduction to these new concepts had been, they intrigued her.

Jaxon sighed. “They… it’s stuff the older kids use to scare little kids.” He moved to push the button at the lift door, but Arin preempted him. She liked pushing buttons, especially these because they lit up. Riding the lift was always fun. Someday she wanted to start at the very bottom and go up one floor at a time to see what there was at each stop. But she knew that would take a long time, and her parents only let her leave their apartment if she was with Jaxon or Grandma.

As the lift door opened with a merry dinging sound, Jaxon placed both of his hands on her shoulders, his expression serious and eyes boring into hers. “But I promise, when I grow up, I’m going to protect you. You don’t ever have to be afraid of monsters because if they come, I’ll kill ‘em before they ever get to you.”

“Oh—excuse me, please.” The sound of a kindly adult female voice caused both the children to look up and stumble aside to get out of the way of a tall woman in a grey security officer’s uniform, a holster at her hip and her black boots sharply shined.

“S-sorry, ma’am,” Jaxon apologized, puffing out his chest and offering her a proud salute.

Arin craned her neck. The woman had long, frizzy orange hair woven into a braid that draped over one shoulder, dark eyes, an aquiline nose, and the pale skin that everyone in Theta Sanctuary shared. Her face was rigid and stern, but she seemed to catch Jaxon’s salute out of the corner of her eye and she turned to him, her expression melting into a warm smile as she smartly returned the gesture. “At ease, officer,” she said to the boy with a grin. “Carry on.” With that, she turned and continued on her way.

Jaxon watched her for a long while, until she turned a corner. “… I want to be like her someday,” he breathed. Turning back to his cousin, he gave her a quick hug with one arm, holding the lift door open for her with the other. “Say hi to Grandma for me. I’ll keep Fia away from you from now on. She’s dumb.”

Arin stepped inside and keyed in the number to the bottommost floor this lift reached: the archives. She was glad it was simply the last floor—that was easy to remember. She waved to Jaxon as the door closed and she heard unseen mechanisms grinding to life, feeling the familiar sensation in the pit of her stomach as she began the descent.

After what felt to her like an hour, the doors opened to her favorite place in the entire sanctuary, the vast white hall that held rows and rows of data drives full of stories. Most of them didn’t have enough pictures so they couldn’t keep her attention for very long, but she’d learned to read a couple of years ago, even though she was just about to officially start her schooling, so her appetite for information and adventure was voracious.

Today, though, she wanted to know about a specific subject, and she wanted to know about it from a person, not a screen. She wandered over to the front desk. Behind it sat a woman just beginning to wrinkle, with short, curly brown-gray hair, reclined in a chair reading something on her comm. As Arin approached, the woman looked up, her face all business for a moment but then relaxing into a smile. “Hi, sweetie!” she cooed, standing up and rounding the desk to give her granddaughter a hug.

“Hi Grandma!” Arin buried her face in the woman’s skirt. Grandma always smelled good, a sort of sweet, sleepy aroma. Grandma-smell and books were inextricably intertwined in Arin’s brain.

“It’s so nice of you to visit me down here!” Grandma continued. “Do you want to look at books?”

“No,” Arin pulled away and shook her head. “Grandma, what’s the surface?”

The woman’s face fell for a moment before she put on a smile again, taking the girl’s hand and leading her to an area stocked with chairs, tables, and couches. Arin came to the archives nearly every day, but she’d never seen anyone sitting there. She would, however, see plenty of people in the rooms above, watching screens for hours on end.

“The surface is… a world above ours,” Grandma explained, sitting on a large chair and seating Arin on her lap. “It’s much, much bigger than this shelter. You could walk all day and not reach the end of it.”

Arin’s eyes widened. A world bigger than the shelter? She already felt so small and her home felt so large. It was hard for her to comprehend that there could be anything outside these walls. Then again, she thought, she read about lots of strange things in books, things that she didn’t think the shelter had. Books talked about things like dogs and trees and cars and something called the sky that had clouds in it. “Why don’t we live on the surface?” she asked, folding her hands.

Grandma thought for a moment, her green eyes turning toward the ceiling. When she looked back, she had a knowing smile plastered on her face. “Because we have everything we need here, sweetheart. Your family is here, and we have food and water and more books than anyone could ever read in a lifetime.”

Arin frowned, taking that as a challenge. “I bet I could read them all. Have we always lived in the shelter?”

“A long, long time ago, our ancestors came to live down here.”

“But what’s on the surface? Are there trees?”

Grandma’s gaze grew distant, and then she shook her head. “No. No trees. No one ever goes to the surface. It’s much nicer down here, trust me.”

“I guess…” Arin kicked her legs slightly. No trees. That was disappointing. Maybe the surface wasn’t like books, after all. People made things up for books, didn’t they? Maybe the sky was made up, too. But if those things were imaginary, what kind of real things were in the world above them? “I want to go to the surface. I want to see what’s there. I want to explore.”

Grandma smiled gently. “We’re not allowed.”

Arin frowned. She generally didn’t find rules hard to follow, but this one would be. Grandma made a motion like she was going to take Arin off of her lap, but Arin settled herself firmly on the woman’s knee, refusing to leave until she had gotten both of her questions answered. “What are monsters?”

The woman flinched, but recovered quickly and patted Arin on the head. “Silly stories the children make up, dear. They’re nothing to worry about.”

This did not convince her. “Jaxon thinks they’re real. He says he’s gonna grow up and kill them before they get to me.”

Grandma chewed on her lower lip. She avoided Arin’s gaze for a long while before turning to her again. “Jaxon’s right. Monsters are real, I’m sorry to say. That’s what’s on the surface.”

“But how do you know that?” Arin tilted her head. “If nobody ever goes to the surface then how do you know there’s monsters?”

The older woman took a deep breath. “Do you want to find out?” The girl nodded fervently, sending her pigtails flying. “All right… I’ll show you. Let’s get up.”

Arin dutifully launched herself off of Grandma’s lap and the woman took her hand, leading her around the front desk and through a hallway. Arin looked around—she’d been back here a few times before, helping her grandmother sort returned data drives. At the end of the hall, they made a turn, and now Arin was in unfamiliar territory that she’d only caught small glimpses of before. She grinned in excitement at exploring someplace new. This hallway was not much different than the last, bare except for a single, windowless metal door at the end.

Grandma sifted through the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a keyring. She unlocked the door, flicked on the light, and led Arin inside. The room on the other side was small and dark, lit only by a single fluorescent panel on the ceiling. The bulk of the room was taken up by a large console with more buttons, dials, and levers than Arin knew what to do with, and although she assumed she wasn’t allowed to play with them, she wanted to desperately. In front of the console were two office chairs, with two sets of headphones hanging nearby.

“Here, have a seat,” Grandma instructed, pulling out the chairs and gesturing for Arin to take one. Arin clambered onto it, using the nearby console to push herself into a spin as her feet didn’t touch the ground. She was about to try to go faster, but Grandma handed her a pair of the headphones and Arin stopped spinning to slide them on. Even adjusted to the smallest setting, they were still too large on her, but it was to be expected, she thought as she played with the bouncy spiral cord.

She looked over to Grandma, who was sitting in the other chair, wearing the other set. “The monsters use something called a radio,” the older woman explained, flipping a few switches and making lights come on. Arin’s ears filled with static. “It’s a little like our computer network, but it uses an older kind of technology. They use it to talk to each other, and we have sensors that catch their radio waves so we can hear them.” She sounded matter-of-fact, but Arin could see her hands tremble slightly.

“Do you see that large dial over there?” Grandma pointed to the panel between the both of them. “Turn it, slowly, until you hear a voice.”

Arin nodded, gripping the dial and starting to rotate it. At first, static was all she could hear, but then another sound started to emerge from the noise and she gasped. “Is that them?”

“Turn it a little more,” Grandma urged. “It’ll become clearer.”

Her mouth now dry, Arin followed her grandmother’s instructions. The sound became louder and more distinct until it was very plainly a voice, but one unlike any Arin had ever heard. Although it seemed to be female simply from the timbre, it was deep, harsh and guttural. Furthermore, Arin couldn’t understand anything the voice was saying. It seemed to be speaking gibberish full of angry snaps and growls. Arin pressed the headphones closer to her ears, hoping she’d be able to make out something she understood, but to no avail. “What is she saying?”

“She’s giving a weather report,” Grandma replied absently. Arin turned to see the woman bent over a keyboard, typing furiously and watching the screen in front of her. “She’s talking about how it’s going to be hot and sunny today with a chance of storms tonight.”
Sun. Storms. Those were things in stories, Arin remembered. So maybe people hadn’t made up everything that was in books. “What’s weather?”

“Something they have on the surface. They don’t have a regulated temperature like we do. And sometimes water falls from the sky,” Grandma explained. “It’s dangerous up there. I’m glad we live down here where it’s safe.”

Arin gave her a sympathetic half-smile and folded her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t be tempted to push any buttons. She didn’t care how dangerous Grandma thought the surface was. It was full of things Arin had never seen and now wanted to so badly. “How do you know what she’s saying?”

Grandma ceased her typing for a moment and turned back to her. “She’s speaking in another language. A long time ago, our ancestors discovered the radio transmissions and began recording them and figuring out what they were saying. That’s when archivists started to have the job of learning the monsters’ language and listening to transmissions and doing more recording.”

“Why? Why learn about something if you don’t ever want to see it?” Arin couldn’t understand such reasoning. The surface was up there, waiting to be explored and discovered. Who would be content living their entire life down here once they knew how much was out there?

“Just in case…” Grandma gripped the edge of the console. “We want to keep track of them and know what they’re planning. If they ever find out we’re out here… we need time to react.”

Arin noticed the cracking in her grandmother’s voice. “Why?”

The woman looked down at her, switching off the dial and pulling her headphones down around her neck. “There are people on the surface, too. We don’t really know for sure what the monsters do to them. But it seems that up there, the monsters rule.”

Arin sat back in the chair, taking her own headphones off and fidgeting with them. “… Maybe the monsters just need somebody to be nice to them.”

“They’re not nice, Arin,” Grandma replied with a sudden sternness. “The children call them monsters for a reason. Their speech is full of hate and cruelty.”

“But… but maybe they’re just lonely,” Arin insisted. She didn’t want to think that there was an entire population of bad, terrible things up there. She didn’t want to be afraid of them, even if their words sounded scary. After all, that cruel-sounding speech had turned out to be just talking about the sun, and the sun didn’t seem bad in books.

Grandma sighed. “Sweetheart… their world doesn’t work like that. They’ll never want to be friends with you, I’m sorry.”

Arin wasn’t buying it. She knew what it was like to be excluded and thought of as different. She wondered if the monsters called themselves monsters, or if it was just something the humans called them. She wondered if they were proud of being monsters and what they really thought of humans. She had so many questions for them, and, barring actually going to the surface, there was only one way she knew of to get the answers.

She gripped the armrests of the chair and leaned forward. “Grandma, I want to work here with you when I grow up! I want to learn the monsters’ language and find out what they’re saying!”

Her grandmother looked at her in surprise and then smiled bittersweetly. “Well, dear, work hard in school and put in your application to be an archivist when you’re older, and you’re sure to get the job. I know how smart you are.” She reached over and mussed Arin’s hair slightly, causing the girl to giggle.

Suddenly, there was a beeping sound. Grandma pulled out her ringing comm and tapped the screen, holding it to her ear. “Hello? Oh, hi, sweetie. Yes, she’s down in the archives with me. Would you like me to bring her to dinner? All right, I’ll see you there. Love you. Bye.” Tapping again to hang up, Grandma looked down at Arin. “Well, it seems it’s time for dinner. May I escort you to the cafeteria, my dear?” she asked with a sudden regal flair.

Arin chuckled, sliding out of the chair. “Of course!” She followed Grandma to the door, but paused there for a moment and looked back at the console. In this room was her link to a surface she had only today learned existed and wasn’t sure if she could ever personally experience, and her sole tie to another people known only as monsters by her own. It struck her then just how little of the world she actually knew, and she promised herself that someday she would explore all of it. Perhaps she would even find a way to make friends with monsters.

This is actually a prologue to one of the novels I'm co-authoring, and it was supremely fun to write younger versions of these characters. I didn't realize what adorable kids they'd be, haha. And of course it's drenched with irony because about eighteen years after this takes place, their shelter does get raided by the "monsters", and Arin does end up befriending them. In your face, xenophobia!

Anyone want to give us a prompt for this week?

[Breakingchains]

Yay, the Sheik cometh. =D Hi, guys.

I'll throw a prompt out there if no one else wants this one:
A character pockets an object without understanding its significance.

And here's mine for A child discovers something new about its world. Why yes, I was watching YouTube videos about cochlear implants!

SPOILER: Click to show

  The wood is grainy on his fingers, the paint shiny and slick. He moves slowly, balancing another cube on top of the stack, moving with care and precision. The blocks are bright and vivid and covered in shapes, and he looks over the pile to the left. The next he picks up is sunny, the color of the flowers painted on the wall, and he sets it down with care, starting another tower. He can see Mom’s mouth moving out of the corner of his eye, his sister fidgeting wildly with her colored bracelets, but he doesn’t much care. The sunny block goes down, and then it’s back to the pile. This one’s the color of grass…

   The lady comes in. More mouths move. She adjusts something on the side of his head, smiling at him, and he looks but then ignores her, continuing to arrange the blocks. Sister is smiling and open-mouthed and flapping her hands, but for several minutes no one bothers him. Lady stares into a screen, pausing every so often to look at Mom, who fidgets and responds and then sits still. A block something like the color of the cat’s fur tops the tower, and he spends a long time aligning it, satisfied but then not, adjusting and nudging and then he starts another…

   Then comes a crash. Vibrations fill his head, blasting and murmuring until he feels it in his teeth. He lets out a rush of air, and with it comes another blast of vibrations, high-pitched and half-formed, mixing with the roar in his ears.

   The blocks are less important now. He looks up, wide-eyed. Mom is smiling with her eyes now, both hands over her mouth. Sister looks like she can’t sit still, bracelets shaking all over with the movements of her hands. Mom’s mouth moves and more vibrations come out, ringing in his jaw and neck, but he cannot make anything out of the sudden assault… at first.

   The crash continues, and he realizes it’s somewhere his ears. He grabs them, pulling at them, baffled, motioning frantically with the other hand. Sister looks like it’s the happiest day of her life, and Mom’s mouth is still moving. The lady is also speaking, and the crash tapers off now, less intense but no less weird—but he slowly calms down, sitting and observing, trying to work out what has happened as the smiles around him continue making noise.

   Noise is new.

So, yes. Writing from the POV of a small child = difficult, writing from the point of view of a deaf person = also difficult when you've never experienced it yourself. Put into blender and mix... xD; That's part of why this is only about 500 words--I kept wanting to insert either sound details or sound-based terms that just wouldn't be there and then having to cut material.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the prompt! This should be a fun one.

Kudos to you for attempting two difficult POVs combined! That was an excellent piece. I really loved your vivid descriptions, I think you did a very convincing job painting the main character's perception of his world. The details of the family's emotional response were cute, too.

[Breakingchains]

Thanks Squid. ^^ (I should probably have an actually-deaf person look it over and tell me where I messed up, though. x3) I finally got a chance to read over your piece--the characters are well-described and there's a good sense of setting. (And I'm guessing the "monsters" are humans?)

Unfortunately, from this point on I probably won't be very active here for a while because I start college Monday and I'm expecting it to be kind of hectic. So if I disappear off the face of the earth, that's why. xD; I hope this thread starts getting more traffic soon.

[Deleted]

Thanks! I was worried that the sense of setting wouldn't be coherent enough, because there's actually a very involved explanation as to why these people are underground and what has happened to the world they live in (which is actually our world about five hundred years from now), but I didn't want to have everything about the history of Arin's people revealed to her all at once at age five (not to mention there are details about it that no one living in that time now knows). And the "monsters" are actually a race that mutated from humans several centuries ago, eight-foot-tall digitigrades with long claws, sharp teeth, and a dystopian society. They're my co-author's creation and they're adorable.

Thanks for the heads-up! I've got school starting next week too. I appreciate you participating when you could, though! It was awesome! And yeah, I hope so too. xD At least several other people seem to be interested.

[Sporty]

This looks like a lot of fun! Not sure I'll be joining in every week, but all in all it sounds like it'll make for some good writing practice - I'll see if I can come up with something to go with this week's prompt ^^

[Deleted]

Aaaahhhh welcome welcome I hope I don't scare you away! Thanks for joining in! I hope you have fun!

[Sporty]

Haha, thank you, and don't worry; I'm sure you won't scare me off I think I've got something of an idea now, although it's going to take a little work to make it flow right and fit the prompt at the same time ^^

[Deleted]

xD I'm zany, but mostly harmless. ... Mostly. I'm excited to see what you'll come up with!

I splurged and wrote mine last night in a fit of creativity. xD Now I have to wait until Monday to post it... agghhh. Oh well, gives me time to work on other stuff.

[Deleted]

Sorry this is a bit late in coming. :/ School started for me today and everything feels hectic--I'm sure many of you know the feeling. Good thing I got this done nice and early:

SPOILER: Click to show

Allie wandered past the stands of the old high school football field, rapping lovingly on their thick metal struts. The hollow sound was drowned out by the chatter and cheers of the mass of humanity that currently occupied the top side of the stands, pounding their feet and yelling themselves hoarse. It had been fun for a bit, but after Allie drank the last of her hot chocolate, the urge struck to get away from the noise for a while.

Or maybe it was the urge to walk off all the sugar.

Strutting past the snack shack on spindly, blue-jeaned teenage legs, she broke off the sidewalk and into the darkness beyond, a patch of benign woodland safely shuttered in on all sides by towns. The only animals to stalk it now were probably squirrels and
stray cats, and straw-haired, brown-eyed girls who liked exploring moonlit forests.

The woods were a bubble of quiet and peace as Allie shuffled through dead leaves, the roar of the crowd sounding more and more like the sea. She would circle around for a bit, she decided, and then get startled by her dad calling to see where she was, and they would walk home together and watch the fog roll in from the bay, thick and orange-bellied as it reflected city lights.

Her plans were sent reeling when she suddenly heard a high-pitched, distant whine above, not sounding like any airplane or helicopter, and she looked up. Past the treetops was an eerie green light coursing through the sky at a steep angle—and it looked as though it was headed straight for the woods.

Allie sucked in a breath and bolted, remembering all too late that sprinting at full tilt through thick woodland at night is generally a bad idea. With a sickening jolt she felt her foot catch on something and she fell on her face, sending her glasses flying.
The screeching grew louder, and the forest was sharply illuminated like someone had turned a green floodlight on it. Allie looked up in blurry amazement as a bright light careened by, snapping off the tops of trees, and a blast of hot air hit her, causing her to duck into her jacket instinctively. There was a whistling noise, and then the sound of something small tumbling through the branches of a nearby tree. The light faded as quickly as it had come, and then all was deathly silent.

Allie lay there for a moment, breathing hard and trying to comprehend what had just happened. Would this show up on the news tonight? She couldn’t have been the only one to see it—surely someone had caught it on their phone. Would the police find her and question her? Was she going to end up on one of those UFO documentaries full of kooks?

The best way to prevent that, she decided, was to pretend nothing had happened. To that effect, she groped around for her glasses, found them (mercifully unharmed), and dragged herself to her feet, brushing off leaves.

A faint pink glow in the corner of her vision caught Allie’s attention, and she turned to see a rosy light at the foot of a large elm. Ignoring the situation could wait, she decided with much less of a mental struggle than she thought she ought to have. Tilting her head, she approached it slowly, picking up a long stick and holding it in front of her like a knife, as if she was expecting to be attacked.

Sitting comfortably between two gnarled roots was a round, oval object about the size of a bar of soap, soft pink in color and gradiating to a deeper red near its center. It was emitting a steady, warm glow like a nightlight, and was so smooth that Allie thought it must have been made of either glass or jelly.

After watching it for a moment to be sure it wouldn’t do anything, Allie slowly crouched down, reached out with the stick, and poked it. The stick met with a sort of rubbery resistance, like a water balloon filled to capacity, but the object did not react. Allie pursed her lips in thought, slowly withdrawing the stick and feeling the end. It wasn’t hot, or any other sort of sensation. She didn’t quite know what she had been expecting, really.

The air was suddenly filled with an energetic tune, causing her to jump and bite her tongue before scrambling to get her buzzing phone out of her pocket. “Hello?” she croaked. “Oh, hey Dad.” She continued to watch the object warily, but it remained inert, its glow steady as ever. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. What weird light? I didn’t see anything,” she lied. “I went to get nachos. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Hanging up and pocketing her phone again, she stared hard at the mysterious thing. Her mind was screaming at her to leave it alone, but before she could think up a good answer, she found her arm extending and figured she might as well go with the flow. She was tired of being in denial about her curiosity, anyway.

As her fingers closed around the object, fitting it snugly in her palm, she noted how strangely warm it was, and soft to the touch. Bringing it closer, she felt it pulse slightly against her hand, and she smiled. Odd as it was to say, she found it rather cute. Placing it carefully in her jacket pocket, she set off through the woods back to the field, whistling the main theme from Star Wars.

***

“<<All systems back online and stable,>>” Dryas heaved a sigh, wiping the back of one of her hands across her mottled-blue brow. Her other three hands were still racing across the dashboard of the ship. “<<That was a close one. Stupid planet in the way of the fastest warp lanes.>>”

The door to the cockpit opened and a stringy, tentacled purple fellow slithered through, air hissing through his mandibles. “<<Ah, Rilui,>>” Dryas greeted him over her shoulder. “<<How’d the cargo check out?>>”

“<<Uhh… about that…>>” Rilui poked two thin tentacles together, his flat head slung low.

Dryas’s face fell.

“<<We, uh… may have lost some of the cargo.>>”

The woman frowned. She punched one last command and then swung herself out of the chair, stalking over to her copilot. “<<’May have’?>>”

Rilui gulped. “<<Okay, okay, we did lose some of the cargo! I’m sorry, it’s just, you told me to jettison all unnecessary weight, and I got confused, and-->>”

Dryas reached out and snatched the collar of his shirt. “<<You moron, what did we lose?! I seriously don’t want to have to go back there, that place looked like a Class II civ—just smart enough to know how to blow us to shreds or dissect us!>>”

“<<I, uh…>>” The copilot winced. “<<I… sort of… accidentally… jettisoned the Tishian ravager egg.>>”

“<<Gah!>>” Dryas cried out in dismay and let go of his collar in surprise. “<<Nice going, Rilui, how’s it feel to know you’re responsible for the destruction of an entire star system?!>>” Holding her head, she paced around what little space the cockpit had. “<<How are we supposed to explain to the Institute for Galactic Biology that we lost – lost – the last remaining living specimen of the most dangerous species in the galaxy?!>>”

“<<Well—we could go back for it-->>” Rilui started to suggest, but Dryas held out two of her hands in front of his face, looking like she was barely able to restrain herself from attacking him in a frenzy.

“<<There is no way,>>” Dryas snarled, “<<no way I’m going back to that death trap. That planet is doomed. Tishian ravagers need to bond with a strong mind or they become killing machines, and that world is simply too primitive. I mean, they still use radio waves, for crying out loud, Rilui, radio waves!>>” She shook all four fists in the air and then went to lean her forehead against the top of her chair’s backrest, waving a hand at him dismissively. “<<It’s no use. We’ve botched the job and the Institute will never hire us again, and our reputation will spread and soon no one will want to hire us and I’ll have to go live in a bivouac-box in an asteroid and eat silicon.>>”

Rilui’s shoulders slumped. “<<Maybe it’s not too late,>>” he tried to assure her. “<<The egg develops more slowly in cold environments, doesn’t it? I’m sure none of that planet’s inhabitants would be stupid enough to pick the thing up and incubate it.>>”

Dryas took in a long breath and sighed. After allowing the silence to linger, she spoke again. “<<Yeah… yeah, you’re right.>>” Numbly, she slumped into the chair and began inputting commands. “<<We, we can do this. We have the better tech. That egg couldn’t have gone far, anyway.>>”

Rather silly, yes. Writing frantic, anxiety-wracked aliens is so much fun.

I'm still trying to get a good estimate of what my weekly workload is going to look like (and I have a paper due at the end of September already... not very conducive to alleviating stress), so I'm not sure if I can do one this week, but here's a prompt for anyone who wants one:

A character falls out of love with something.

[Sheik]

Okay, I've been kind of busy with school for the past two weeks (so much homeworkkkk ) but I swear, I'm going to do it this week. I am so determined that it's scaring me a little.

*rushes to Word with a battle cry*

[Sporty]

I think I might have to take a rain check on this one... My first idea didn't really end up going anywhere, so then I tried coming up with a couple other ideas that also didn't go anywhere, and then today I was finally going to force myself to just try writing the last one out but ended up busy for most of the day ^^; I might still try to get it done tomorrow, though it'd be a little late then ^^;

That was a fun little story, Squid! Now I actually kind of wish I could see it expanded into a silly story in which Allie ends up bonding with the Tishian ravager and they go on crazy adventures together XD

[Deleted]

Aug 26, 2013 22:08:16 GMT -5 Sheik said:

Okay, I've been kind of busy with school for the past two weeks (so much homeworkkkk ) but I swear, I'm going to do it this week. I am so determined that it's scaring me a little.

*rushes to Word with a battle cry*

Don't worry, I've been busy with school too. >.< Granted, my first day was yesterday... but I'm sure you know how overwhelming the first week of school can be, and I have a ton of reading I need to do for two classes. Fun times. (Well, I love reading so it is fun, but it's also pretty time-consuming.) Good luck this week! Your determination scares me a little, too!

Aug 26, 2013 22:30:14 GMT -5 Sporty said:

I think I might have to take a rain check on this one... My first idea didn't really end up going anywhere, so then I tried coming up with a couple other ideas that also didn't go anywhere, and then today I was finally going to force myself to just try writing the last one out but ended up busy for most of the day ^^; I might still try to get it done tomorrow, though it'd be a little late then ^^;

That was a fun little story, Squid! Now I actually kind of wish I could see it expanded into a silly story in which Allie ends up bonding with the Tishian ravager and they go on crazy adventures together XD

Haha, don't worry about it. When ideas work, they work, and when they don't, they don't. 

Thanks! Haha, that's what I was trying to hint might happen. Who knows, maybe I will expand it someday. The characters were definitely fun to work with.

[Sporty]

Got something this week! I wanted to use at least some of these prompts as a chance to do character studies and whatnot for some of the stories I've still got in the planning stages, and I wanted at least the first one to be fairly lighthearted. The latter was a bit tricky with this past week's prompt, but I think I managed  I apologize in advance for any mistakes - since this was just a fun little exercise, I really didn't feel up to putting it through the usual revision process ^^;

SPOILER: Click to show

Evelyn found her elder sister sprawled out over her bedsheets, a small scowl on her face.

The young girl hesitated for a moment. She rarely saw Jackie in a pouty mood, and didn’t know how to respond. Wasn’t it the big sister’s job to comfort her sibling? Or else the mom or dad’s?

Evelyn was saved from further deliberation when Jackie noticed her. The older girl huffed and muttered, “What do you want?”

Evelyn paused a moment longer and then grinned as she had an idea. She ran up and bounced onto her sister’s bed. “Can you tell me a story? One like the ones Dad likes to tell us! I like hearing about the Lake Champ… Champagne monster.”

Jackie snorted and turned away. “I don’t think so.”

Evelyn’s smile faded. Didn’t Jackie love talking about Dad’s weird creatures? “Why not?”

“Because the Lake Champlain monster is stupid,” the older girl huffed into her sheets. “And so is the Chupacabra, and the Skunk Ape and the Brosno Dragon and all those other dumb fake animals.”

Evelyn gasped. “But… But you and Dad don’t think they’re fake! They’re not fake!”

Jackie sat up and sighed. “Tell that to Andrew and Matt and everyone else in my class. I’m the laughingstock of the school now because I believed in those dumb legends!” With an exasperated groan, she flopped back down onto the sheets and started to grumble.

Evelyn bit her lip. Jackie couldn’t stop believing in those legends – she loved talking about the different weird animals, and she told the best stories about them. But, well, they always did seem just a little bit silly to Evelyn herself. But not a bad silly! Just a kind of weird but really fun one.

Clearly her older sister didn’t think so. Jackie was taking these legends as all or nothing, and if her classmates wanted to go the same way and be jerks about it, then something was gonna have to change.

Evelyn drew little circles on the bedcovers with her finger, thinking. “Maybe Andrew and Matt are the dumb ones,” she considered aloud.

Jackie turned her head to shoot her little sister a glare. “You mean them and everyone else?”

Evelyn shrugged. “Well, you’re certainly not stupid. And it’s not like they ever went out and proved that those weird animals don’t exist, so how would they know?” She grinned. “We should go out and find one!”

Jackie was silent for a long moment. Evelyn held her breath, hoping dearly that her big sister would take the challenge and be happy again.

The older girl slowly sat up. “I… I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try,” she said, her voice a little unsure. “At least then we could maybe find out for sure whether some of the different cryptids are real or not.” After a moment, her eyes lit up. Returning the grin as she looked toward Evelyn, she cried, “And just think of what might happen if we find one! If we can prove it to everyone else, we’ll be famous!”

Evelyn gasped. She hadn’t even thought of that. “Hey, yeah!”

Jackie hopped off the bed and ran out the room, beckoning for her sister to follow. “Come on, I bet if we hurry we can get a head start before dinner tonight!”

Evelyn beamed as she took off after the older girl. She was glad to have Jackie back to normal, and this was going to be fun.

Short and simple, but hopefully still a little fun ^^ I'm not really sure where exactly I was going with the ages of the girls though - it wasn't too important to the story, but I think Jackie may have come across as a little too much older than Evelyn. Also, you'll probably be seeing more of Jackie in future prompts (as an adult, she's the main character in the series I've got planned, although Evelyn is actually a fairly minor character. It was pretty surprising when this little story ended up being told from her point of view!)

On a completely different note, would it be all right to have a sort of "musical" prompt once in a while? I'm always coming up with story ideas to go with songs I like, and thought it might be fun to use a song or perhaps a line from one as a prompt